Hi, Cal. I think your reading habits are super inspiring. And I'm glad to say I've been able to adopt them in my own life. I am currently on my fifth book of the month, which is really satisfying. But one practical health-related question-- I went to the eye doctor recently.

And the first thing the doctor said was, oh, do you read a lot? Because it was apparent in the physiology of my eyeballs that my eyes are pretty strained. And so I know that you like to read during your breaks from work, which suggests that you spend a lot of time reading, both for work and then for pleasure or otherwise.

So how do you keep your eyes healthy while still reading at such a great clip? Thanks. Well, here's the thing. Even if you're reading five books a month, the amount of time you're looking at a book compared to the amount of time you're looking at a computer screen for your normal job, assuming you're a knowledge worker type, it's still minuscule.

And the strain of looking at a computer monitor or a phone is much greater than the strain of looking at a matte-printed ink on paper. So partially, I'm going to say, don't worry about reading is going to be the thing that is going to cause the issues, because it's probably much more strain the seven hours a day you probably have to look at computer screens than it is reading.

That being said, the two rules that help with reading is-- well, actually, let me add a third. Number one, do it on paper when you can. Don't do it on your phone. Don't do it on tablet. The backlight screen is more straining on your eyes. I count Kindle as paper, by the way.

It is paper. The technology in Kindle, just from a physiological experience of reading, is the same, because the technology in Kindle is not a screen, like you would have on a laptop. It's not pixels that have light go into them. That's what strains you when you look at a computer, is you have all this-- it's light.

It's pixels that have light, and the light is a particular color. The e-ink technology in a Kindle is actually a bunch of little disks. And one side's black, and one side is white, give or take. And they shock it. You can put a little bit of electricity to the disk.

You can flip it over. But once you've take the electricity away, it's a physical thing. You're looking at physical little pieces of plastic that are black on one side and white on the other that have been arranged, flipped in a pattern that looks like words. So it's actually, from an eye physiology perspective, the same as looking at words printed on a piece of paper.

You can put a light on your Kindle like you would on a book, but you're looking at just a physical surface that has some black and some white pieces. So a Kindle is not going to strain your eyes any more than a book. Number two, have enough light. You strain your eyes if you read low light.

And three, use reading glasses if you feel the strain. Those of us who have lived an intellectual life, we typically do need reading glasses earlier. I'm 39, but I still have to-- in low light situations, I have to use reading glasses. So use reading glasses. Have lots of light.

Stay away from backlit screens when you read, and you'll be fine. But in general, I'm going to say I'm letting reading off the hook here, because the seven hours you're on Zoom has got to be worse than the one hour you spent that day reading and rereading my books, which I assume, by the way, is what you're doing.

That's what I recommend. You just go through my books in order, just a cycle again and again. All right, let's see here. Am I old? You don't wear reading glasses, do you, Jesse? I don't wear reading glasses, but I got LASIK. So I used to wear glasses when I drive at night.

But now I don't really have to do that. Does LASIK work for you? Yeah, it worked great. I should do that. And my father job paid for it. Here's my question about LASIK. How do people do without it? How do people do long-term camping or adventure outdoor trips or something like this?

I occasionally get invited on these things, like let's go hike the whatever, Machu Picchu or something like that. And how do you do these long trips if you have contacts or glasses? It seems like it would be impossible, right? I guess you could have glasses you could wear. But anyways, I should do LASIK because I've thought about that.

I can't do long-term camping trips or this or that because I wear contacts. I can't deal with contacts in the woods. I'm sure a lot of people do those trips or in the same boat as you. And they probably haven't figured it out. So you probably figured that out.

But in terms of getting LASIK, I thought it was great. And it's seamless. It's like a 10-minute procedure. I should do that. I should do that. Or wear complicated glasses, like blue plastic, awesome Warby Parker glasses. I think that would be-- - Rec specs from back in the day, like NBA games?

- Yeah, I'm gonna wear, who was it that used to wear the rec specs? It wasn't Magic Johnson, was it? It was, someone classically wore those. - Kareem? - Kareem, yes. I'm gonna wear Kareem rec specs on air, just so people think I'm more athletic. And a sweatband. Be good.

- All right, where are we at? That's four, do we have another call? - That's all the questions we have for today's show. - All right, well, excellent. So we end on a high note. I'm gonna start wearing rec specs and a sweatband so that everyone thinks that I am more athletic than I am.

Or complicated blue plastic glasses so everyone will think I'm smarter. I can just depend on what I'm trying to go on. Have you seen, not to go on this thing, but if you live in a city and you're around 30-year-olds who are overeducated and aren't beaten down by having families yet, there's so much care in glassware and facial hair at this point that there's an arms race of who can have the more complicated, weird glasses.

- Yeah, glasses are a big thing. There's so many different styles. I see them all the time. I know what you're talking about. But what I can't stop thinking about and I'm laughing about is, you were talking about Zuckerberg and his master plan to have everybody having all these devices and glass.

And I can just see you're already wearing Rex-Mex going forward. - Yeah, but this is the technological threshold that has to be passed for this to be the case is the glasses have to look good. All right, so this was the problem with Google Glass is that if you walked around in those Google Glass, otherwise very respectable people, you know, it's an elementary school teacher on the way back from church, it just would feel the urge to punch you.

You just see someone with those things on, you're like, I just wanna knock this guy over. This is crazy. You are like a dork goblin and like you should be injured. So like the technology has, these have to look better, but we'll cross that. I think we'll cross that bridge.

Like they're gonna miniaturize these more and more. It's gonna look better. But it is inevitable 'cause it is just so much cheaper. I just don't see how we're gonna avoid a future in which almost all of our interactions with visual technological interfaces will be virtual. It's gonna be, I mean, 'cause I did this thing for the New Yorker last month where I was working in VR.

And there's this product called Immersed that's kind of winning the work in VR war right now. And their whole thing was don't focus on collaboration because people don't wanna put on a helmet to have a meeting. They just wanna go on the Zoom. Like find a way to make people's everyday work somehow enhanced by using virtual reality.

And the thing they figured out is that focus on tech type first and give them more screens. Tech types love screens, right? They want multiple monitors. And so if you use Immersed, you can have five monitors. And they're all being powered by your actual machines, right, but in the virtual world, you can have up to five monitors.

And I did this, I worked on it. They're sharp and they're huge. You can drag them, put them wherever you want. And you can have like five big screen TV size monitors in this virtual world. And it really does feel like you're looking at a big screen TV. The resolution is there, it looks fine.

And now you can have your code over here and your email here and your bug tracker over here. And it's literally better than their real world setup because it's more monitors. And that is how, see, that's the trend. So you can have in this virtual reality world, those monitors, so the tech is there.

So now once you can have those monitors with an unobtrusive Google Glass type thing that does not make nice old women wanna punch you, so they get the look right. Why buy the monitors? Like it's literally gonna be, because in the virtual world, you have to wear the big headset, but the thing you see in the virtual world is like, why do I need to own a monitor?

You can watch YouTube or movies in the virtual world. I don't know if you've done this before. It's a movie theater size screen. And it feels like it. Like here is this giant screen, I'm sitting here and it's in a giant dome. And it's like 10 feet away from me.

And it's huge. So again, people don't wanna put a headset on that covers their eyes. But if I have my glasses I'm wearing anyways, can put that screen, why would I buy one? Like, I don't think people realize like how close we are to the singularity. That like, there's a certain tipping point beyond which basically all these factories go out of business.

And it's just gonna be one factory that makes these things. Anyways, that's another point. But I think people don't realize the degree to which our world is about to be a lot more virtual. I don't know if that's, there's good parts of that and bad parts to it. - Snow Crash.

- It's gonna be, yeah, Snow Crash, but without like as many sophisticated. So here's the thing about Snow Crash, but you're reading it now, Jesse, I know. It's like, because like Stevenson's like a, kind of a cool, smart guy, all the characters are so like steampunk, techno, sophisticated, cool, and like having these rat-a-tat-tat dialogues and it's like these interesting artistic figures.

And in these early metaverse things, they're always have like interesting haircuts and it's always, there's a little punk in it. And there's, you know, dyed mohawks and weird leather. And it's like this really cool, I think the author's the one who imagines like, yeah, we're gonna be these like cutting edge, avant-garde steampunk digital nerds, but not, but awesome.

And it's not gonna be the case. It's gonna be, you know, out of shape guys in their American giant hooded sweatshirt that is wanna watch YouTube on a bigger screen. (laughs) It's not the reality, avant-garde is not cool. Immersed is used by a bunch of programmer nerds who had to work remotely because of the pandemic and said, my monitors are at my office, you know?

And so they can put on their headset and get their monitors back. It's like never as cool as the Gibson or Stevenson's of the world predict it's gonna be. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)